Walk through the Edo-Tokyo Museum and you pass a full-scale Nihonbashi bridge, a row of Edo shopfronts, a kabuki theatre facade. Almost none of it is labelled with the one thing a visitor actually wants to know: where is that, and what is there now?

That is what this series does. Each entry takes one museum exhibit or one ukiyo-e print, identifies the location it depicts, and shows what occupies that spot today — with directions, so you can go and stand in it.

How each entry works

• The exhibit — what the museum shows, and which period it reconstructs
• The real location — the modern address, nearest station, and walking directions
• What is there now — photographed on site
• What actually survived — original structure, later reconstruction, or nothing at all

Planned pairings

• The Edo-Tokyo Museum’s Nihonbashi reconstruction → the present-day Nihonbashi, under the expressway
• Hiroshige’s Kinryūzan Temple at Asakusa (1856) → the same sightline at Senso-ji today
• Hiroshige’s Fireworks at Ryōgoku Bridge (1858) → the Sumida riverbank now
• The Edo Castle keep model → the surviving stone base in the Imperial Palace East Gardens

See the Tokyo History Trail map →